Duna Haller
In 1994, Ann Nocenti, alongside Steve & Marianne Lightle, created Jessie Drake, Marvel’s first trans mutant, within Marvel Comics Presents #150-151. Jessie was long-forgotten, but Dani Kinney, after writing a piece about how Jessie’s transness is treated for WWAC, planned to bring her back this very year for an upcoming unofficial zine ‘Jessie Drake: Never Coming Home’ (which has started to launch with a Print Pack by artist Valentine M. Smith whose profits go towards prison abolitionist liberation for trans people, and Ashley Diamond specifically). At the same time, Marvel is bringing Jessie back for Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1. Jessie is more on the news today than ever since 1994, where she was literally absent from Marvel’s line-up. How could have all her erasure from the past 25 years have happened?
In this talk with both Ann Nocenti and Dani Kinney, alongside Mutant Watch usuals Duna Haller and Travis Hedge Coke, we examine Jessie in that very first issue, the reason behind her erasure and fall into oblivion, what could her comeback mean, and how this particular character embodied so many different themes. We talk about second and third wave feminism, semantics and evolving language around transgender people, power, reconciliation, anger. Watch the result here.
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